anonface
This poem exerts a quiet severity,a stark image unraveling into something far more human. The raven devouring the pigeon unsettles, not just for its violence, but for what it implies about misrecognition—mistaking kinship where there is none. That line, “My boy ravens aren't birds / Birds of your kind”, seethes with the ache of exclusion and the refusal to be subsumed into a false likeness. And then there’s the Hamlet allusion—the forsaken village, the bare stones, the mocking tone—which deepens the gravity. Hamlet’s Denmark, too, was a place hollowed by betrayal and moral decay. By invoking that ghostly “Hamlet,” the poem casts the river as both witness and judge, retreating in disgust from a place that mirrors Elsinore: full of hypocrisy, rot, and abandonment. It’s a powerful gesture: quiet, mournful, and scorched with resentment. Thank you for this raw and thought-provoking work.
2025-06-22